Defiance and dignity in the face of annihilation
Between April 19 and May 16, 1943, Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto launched an armed revolt against Nazi forces determined to complete the liquidation of the ghetto. Around 13,000 Jews were killed—6,000 in fires set by the Germans—while another 50,000 to 60,000 were captured and deported to Treblinka. Only a few hundred escaped through the sewers or by hiding outside the ghetto.
“It was only about choosing the way we would die”
The uprising began on April 19, when SS and police units entered the ghetto to carry out the final deportations. Members of the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) and the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) fought back, using makeshift bunkers, pistols, and homemade explosives. Despite limited weapons and no external support, they resisted for almost a month, turning the ruins of the ghetto into a battlefield. German troops responded with tanks, flamethrowers, and mass executions, systematically burning entire blocks to the ground.
By mid-May, resistance had been crushed. On May 16, SS General Jürgen Stroop marked victory by blowing up the Great Synagogue of Warsaw. The uprising did not alter the course of the Holocaust, but it became one of its most enduring symbols of human courage and moral resistance—an act of defiance by those who refused to die in silence.
“Can it even be called an uprising? It was really about not letting ourselves be slaughtered when they came for us. It was only about choosing the way we would die.”
Marek Edelman
in Hanna Krall, ‘Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem’ (Kraków: a5, 1999)